Latest News in Splinterlands

General Updates

• Founders @aggroed and @yabapmatt will chat along with @cryptomancer and Hardpoint about general updates
• Matt shared updates. There were some hiccups it the Season End but much improved! Yippee!
• Recent economy changes will ultimately make a much more sustainable economy
• Working on security for password protection and keeping you all safe
• Cryptomancer is working on the Chaos Legion for the pre-sale
• Prices on 3rd party markets are doing very well which is a positive sign!
• Aggroed gave numbers on growth
  • 448,849 sign ups
  • 266,757 spell books
  • We doubled the number of spell books!
  • If the stats hold true we will double again in the next 40 days.
  • The Growth has been "wild and crazy"
  • This growth has made it so we had to do everything humanly possible to handle that growth and we did just get through the biggest end of season we've had with the least amount of issues. We are getting there!
    Over 900,000 accounts, nearly to 1 million. We have the first mainstream crypto game really.
    Half of those are spell book owners

This is not all bots. We worked with an analyst to see if the bots are larger than normal people and less than 25% are bots and less than 13% are the spellbooks.

We don't know when it will be officially a mainstream game, but hitting 1 million users is a part of that main stream game goal.

• Marketing: We have paused partnership opportunities because the game is growing so quickly and our focus is upkeep and operating properly
• Now that the servers are solid, it's time to focus on that marketing again.

Development and Cryptomancer

• Introduction: Cryptomancer has been a core developer for 2 years now. He implemented the collection power, brawl system and now Chaos Legion
• We have been focusing on bug fixes and scaling issues.
• Stability has improved with just a few things left to do. And that will continue to improve over time.
• Chaos Legion-- implementation of Ranked Battles
• Presale requirements are also being worked on and @nateaguila is working on some GREAT layout and design
  • Pack art
  • Untamed will be replaced with Chaos Legion on Splinterlands Page
  • When you make the purchase, it will appear in your inventory. You won't be able to open the packs until the full launch after the presale.
  • Unopened CL packs will be worth 300 airdrop points each (Matt said in AMA chat)
  • Timeline: Presale Oct 18; Chaos legion opening will probably NOT be fully launched immediately after presale but the hope is before the end of the year
  • What are you most excited for Cryptomancer: I love the direction of the art team. It looks wonderful with a "chaotic" look and I really like the voucher system and how that's going to work. "It's all going to be a huge package of awesomeness."

(Source: Splinterlands Discord)

Chief Architect CallMeTim for the Company since March

• Working on how our databases are performing and contracts established with AWS and other places.
  • Happy to be part of this journey
• Aggroed asked "if we keep growing at this pace, can we still grow or do you see problems?
  • Sitting where we are right now is pretty typical for a company at this point in the journey. I don't see any limits to how far Splinterlands can go
• Priority is to get on top of problems before they arrive.

HardPoint Operating the Game

• Was moved to the "Wizard" section of Discord
• Introduction: Development as Lead Architect and he's done significant levels of data daily so he's used to dealing with how to handle the massive amount of people coming to the servers.
• This is all about how we serve the community better and expand the player base without hurting the economy. Matt will be pushing forward with that economy.
• "I have a good mix of personal skills and technical skills." He hopes this will help with organization and better communication within the whole organization.
• There will be a significant amount of additional devs coming to the team so please be patient with problem tickets because while we are ramping up support for the community, we might have a slow down trying to get these new devs trained, but support will increase and you will eventually find a much faster turn around on those tickets for issues in the game.
• You will see a much more consistent support and the goal is that development NOT hold up the game to move forward with more support.
• The support staff is AMAZING! Please give them huge shout outs for all they do.
• Cryptomancer pointed out in chat: "Our team is really gathering momentum as we bulk up, Hardpoint has been pushing us to increase our Internal efficiency and find areas for us to optimize organizationally speaking. We all have a lot of passion in what we do, and I'm very optimistic about the direction we're heading in!"

Land! (Matt @yabapmatt gave updates)

• Our land expansion has been delayed on the flip side we have increased which will make land when it is released significantly better.
• Our goal is to have devs specifically dealing with JUST land, so we're working on that right now
• Better UI and graphics now because we can make this even MORE amazing
• It's still going to be awhile before it comes. We don't have an ETA for land.
• If you don't want to wait, you can sell your land, but the people that do wait, it's going to be amazing! The land expansion will help improve the entire game, the new way the game works and it will increase the player interaction
• The only way you can generate some cards will be through the land, so the value of land is worth it and we are working to get good people here for an awesome land expansion. It will happen but we don't know when. It's up to you to hold onto it and wait or sell it. It's up to you.
• We have no ETA for you on land, but we are working on it!

Question Section (answered by @aggroed )

Game Development Questions

Please note this has been copied/pasted from the link Aggroed provided in the Discord with answers following. If I missed an answer, it's because the question was skipped in the discussion or my fingers failed me! HA!*

• What's the plan to mitigate the end season rental inflations?
  • We hope to have rentals where you have to specify how long you have the rental so they do not cancel early. The owners would have to stipulate that timing.

• What’s next for guilds? Mathematically, the cost of maxing a guild now sits at over $110,000!!
  • It's something we're working on. It's a communal thing for everyone to pitch into the cost of the guild, and the value is to be in a strong guild and provide utility back to the players and that will increase with land expansion.

Chaos Legion/Card Question

• Question: When we can get info about whether vouchers are needed or not after presale to buy packs? bcoz the vouchers are gonna cost big money somewhere more than 50$ per vouchers
  • When the vouchers come out they plan to stay out
  • We won't have all those packs released right away, we don't have the final details yet though so things may change.

• How do prelaunch packs work? You get bonuses for buying them early but do you have to open the packs to get those bonuses later or simply the act of buying them early is enough? Or do the bonuses transfer to the person who buys the pre-launch pack I put on the market at launch time?
  • Bonuses will work like airdrops. You won't have to open the pack, if you purchased the pack through Splinterlands during the presale, you get that bonus but a second hand sale will not get that bonus.

• Hi, just like to ask regarding the upcoming selling of the new packs, do each pack already have the allotted cards (whether you open it now or after many months it will still be the same) or will it randomly choose in the remaining pool of cards upon opening? Just asking as reference whether it would be worth it to hold your packs for the airdrop points or better to risk getting limited cards. Thank you in advance.

  • The contents of the pack are determined at the time it is opened. The cards are created deterministically using the data from the blockchain. It will choose randomly from the set of available cards.

• With there being 1 million vouchers given out total, but 5 weeks to buy CL packs with them, will voucher rewards be turned off during the 5th week? If so, when will voucher rewards be re-enabled? What other specifics can be given about the voucher system post CL presale? Specifically focusing on the incentives stakes can expect. I understand you voiced your desire to make it sustainable and profitable for all stakers especially those who stake long term.

  • Vouchers will be given out over 30 days with a week cushion to buy those packs. So you'll have a grace period to buy them even when the voucher drops stop. We will announce when the voucher drops resume.

• Question: I have money to buy 1000 packs, but my SPS will be limited by 120 packs. The legionary title is only for pre-sale or can be achieved later, buying 1000 packs? Any plans for a DEC pool inside game? With the increased DEC value, do you think it is time to reduce the DEC needed to upgrade buildings or quest potion value?
  • The Legionaire Title is just during presale. You can buy vouchers on 3rd party markets so that you can make this happen.

• Is there any way to buy inside the game DEC?
  • There's a plus button you can hit beside DEC where you can go to 3rd party places to buy more DEC.
  • Land will provide more trading recourses when Land comes out but that's awhile out

SPS Questions

• Do you have to buy and open the pack in order for them to count towards the airdrop?

  • No

• Are liquidity pool SPS rewards active and if so is that on Diesel pools only or does it count for CUB pool?
  • No we are not giving out SPS currently for pools.
  • LeoFinance launched a Kingdom (Cub Finance Kingdom) and will automatically reinvest your earnings into Pancake. It just launched yesterday. If you are holding SPS and want to put some up you'll get a lot of rewards from it.
  • We will be directly incentivizing people for SPS in liquidity pools but not right now

• How many sps can we get from rank in the future?
  • Check out the white paper for that because we don't have specific numbers.
• How is the spot price of sps and dec determined for the purposes of buying chaos packs? Is it the hive engine price or an amalgamation of all listed markets?
  • Should be a combination of Hive Engine and Pancake Swap Pool

Rental Questions

• If I put a card for sale in the market can I keep using it till it sells or it becomes unavailable?
  • Can't play what you're renting.

Aggy Rapid Answer Questions

• Do potions work with chest rewards or only with packs of cards?

  • Only works with packs

• What causes the increase of total circulating supply? I mean what are the factors causing it??

  • The supply is increased once a month. We are currently working on the smart contract on binance smart chain, minting the new tokens for the different reward pools, team tokens, etc. Right now it's just a manual minting but it's coming.

• Why is the DEC reward per win still small even though the dec price has increased?
  • DEC price doesn't effect the DEC rewards. The player base effects that. The changes that we announced go into place today and those will help prevent the large bot armies. It will be cap based on your league.

• Quick note: It is our goal to get people to higher leagues so that you will get more cards. Everything we do with the game economy to get to the higher leagues. Whenever there are situations that is opposite of that, then we need to fix that. We hope everyone agrees because that will sustain the game. We hadn't focused on that, but now we are because we have more devs now.

• Question: There's a paid service where you can see opponents' monsters before you submit your team. https://splinterviewer.com/. Is this allowed? This might potentially break the game. ref:

• Your team would be submitted initially right away to reduce the number of block chain actions. You had a button that could change that which showed you can show the teams before they are submitted. So now you no longer have that ability.

Matt's Final Comments

• Thanks to Hardpoint, we've just really started to get everything under control and organized. We can now focus on the areas they are actual qualified to work on which makes everything go into a good direction.
• For me personally, in July and August I was feeling we would never get to things, but now we are very organized and we're working on features and a big discussion about land happened yesterday which hadn't happened in months so we are moving forward.

Full AMA With Aggroed Questions: Power Hour of Questions

Please note I copied and pasted some of the questions directly from the Rapid Fire AMA Discord chat to keep up with the discussion so please forgive any errors as it may just be directly from the Discord question itself and/or not something I noticed.*

• Chaos Legion packs: On average based upon player numbers, only plan on getting 2.

• The target for how much SPS you're going to need is going to continue going up, so please manage your expectations.

• Question: Is the goal for DEC to get to a dollar?

  • Way it is designed 1000 DEC to a dollar it will print more if it goes higher.
  • Your rating will rise in Ranked Battles as you go up.

• Will Modern Game Load drop with Chaos Legions?
  • Yes that's the plan

• When lands come out will they contribute to power for league requirements?
  • Not at this time

• (Response to a question regarding PayPal shutting down) Sometimes PayPal shuts us down, but then they re-instate us and this happens with everyone it seems and doesn't have to do with crypto.

• What if the whole 1M presale packs don't get sold in a month? What will happen?

  • Very limited worry that will happen. People are coming in with millions of dollars to buy this but we would extend the presale if that happens.

• When will mobile catch up to the browser?

  • We are looking for mobile devs to improve that.

• (Some question was asked on whether or not to stake SPS.) You will get more earnings and rewards for SPS being staked but you can do what you wish with your SPS.

• Question: Just an Idea : Why not ban bot and have Splinterlands run their own Bots... have these bots accumilate winnings, when someone defeats the BOT they get 50% of the BOTs current accumilation of DEC.... ? Call it "BOT Bountys" You could have some extremely strong Bots in higher leagues that would be lucrative for higher deck power players to play at their highest tier... so Easy, Medium, Hard mode Bots... Thoughts???

  • We are not going to ban bots. I don't want to be in that position to ban bots. We will do our best to make sure they impact the game as little as possible with no advantages.

• Question: will there be a change for power requirments to reach each league? because now the minimum power requirments are very expansive to reach.

  • We might change the league collection power but we aren't sure yet.

• QUESTION: Have you noticed that tournament participation is going down every week? at silver/bronze tournaments we are already at a level where there are more prizes than players. Of course this is because the sps staking requirements, I know you are doing this to keep sps up but if we keep going at this rate tournaments will be for a few selected ones. Players at bronze/silver just dont win enough sps to keep up with it.

  • We will keep the tournament SPS where they are at, but we will see the other aspect. It's sad for the numbers going down, but it's not sad for the players that don't have as many to compete. We are giving away a BUNCH of money a day. If you don't have it, you're missing out and hate making money.

• QUESTION: Do you have an accurate way of seeing how many players are actual humans vs bots and is the amount of chaos legion packs factoring this in?

  • We have data, I like the data, Matt does not. Matt doesn't believe it, but Aggroed believes it's 20% bots. We just hired a third party to provide that bot numbers.

• QUESTION: will there be Land expansions? I remember they said there won't be any more lands in a previous AMA but people on discord said there is an EXPANSION coming
  • We want land to be SCARCE. The one exception to that. When we make new games or new expansions to games, we might sell expansions to that. We are not increasing our land because of more players though.

• Question: Do you have the a plan to make it a 3D battle?

  • We are adding animation, but not sure it will be 3D.

• Question: Why [do] Champion Points count for Airdrop points? They are no in-game asset. It would make more sense to count guild building level as asset.

  • We are celebrating that they are awesome!

• Question: can anybody buy 1000 packs during presale or those the the amount of vouchers determine how much you can buy

  • You'll need $4.00 plus one voucher for each pack.

• Questions: 1) What is land purpose . So many excitations is there ? 2) dec and sps listing in any other exchanges what is next move ?

  • You'll be able to craft NFTS on land [among other things but I didn't get it all.]

• Question: When will user-generated NFT's be able to be sold on Splintertalk?
  • That's one of the things I'm working on and will get that answer soon.

• Question: Any plans on binance listing for sps?
  • That's up to binance. We can't make decisions for binance.

• QUESTION: Any other tournaments coming up? not many running at the moment
  • Working on this this week.

• QUESTION: You mentioned after the pre-sale u still need tickets to purchase packs ? Wouldnt this be negative to new players as the new packs are suppose to encourage new players to sort of challenge in the Modern format
  • It's extremely good for the community that gets the benefit of those packs because the community decides the price but yes, it would be annoying for new players.

• QUESTION: Does using tribal dex liquidity pool count as 2x the dec?
  • Yes they list as double

• QUESTION: What happens after the 1 year airdrop is over? Are there future plans for the airdrop points?
  • It ends and imagine the value there!

• Question: Did you consider the new player in implementing voucher in presale, doubling the price & nerfing the cards power?
  • This is not the only perspective of the game, as we have all types of players, but vouchers can be good for everyone.

• QUESTION: in general chat we always talk about making card rotations for ghost cards per season. we think that it could give bot owners a disadvantage, the market's gonna move much more, the meta discussions every season will increase, and the game will overall be a more fun experience. we think it's a really good idea but would you consider a feature like this?
  • We can consider it but don't think it will make a difference.

• Land QUESTION: How will Cards work on land? Am I going to need max cards to earn max resources off of my land plots?
  • The higher the summoner and monsters are, the better your results, so when they are parked in your land they won't be able to be used for fighting so that's something to consider.

• Q: are you planning on using same VOUCHER tokens for future packs?
  • Vouchers are the highest form of currency anyone could want.

• QUESTION: What plans does the team have if they see the new player count drop due to the season and reward changes that would entice new players to sign up?
  • We will adjust or change but I don't see this being a problem.

• Question: Would you consider increasing the power of cards or reducing the level of power required to get to silver? Almost 100$ invested and I am not near silver.
  • I can look at it but not inclined to change things.

• QUESTION: IF WE BUY CHAOS PACKS WITH SPS, IS IT WHATEVER THE CURRENT SPS PRICE IS AT THE TIME OF BUYING OR A SET SPS AMOUNT?
  • Market rates plus 10% discount in presale

• QUESTION: ARE WE REQUIRED TO OPEN OUR PACKS TO RECEIVE THE AIRDROP CARDS?
  • No

• Red watchers orb mini expansion how much? 3k Dec lang dice???
  • I think it's 3K

• QUESTION: When Splinterlands irl party/conference?
  Actual question: Did you think about the CL presale incentivizes removing SPS liquidity and dumping it into stakepool. Might mean that the price will skyrocket and liquidity collapse (comparatively) at the same time..Any thoughts on this potential "issue" ?
  • Party is a hope on my brain.
  • No thoughts on this issue I'm getting too sleepy.

• QUESTION: Splinterlands Card House in Mirandus? You could walk in and play against other players in Mirandus, with your Splinterlands Deck/Rule sets... Betting against eachother...
  • We like those guys so I can see us doing something with them.

• Question : will the chaos packs give airdrop points and if so how many per pack?
  • Yes, 300 per pack.

• Q : when you can release api docs for 3rd party dev??
  • It's a bit intentional, and it's kind of out of my hands.

• QUESTION : Aggroed, there are only 1M vouchers in total correct ? Then it's not possible to have the 1M pre-sale packs sold !! Many fractions of vouchers will get Lost in some inactive accounts for example (with few SPS staked)
  • Slightly more than 1 million that will come out.

• Question: how many sps is needed to be staked for 1 voucher?
  • That's a moving number.

• Question:
  Will the bonus packs come from the presale amount? If so there will be people that cannot use their vouchers
  • No they will not

• QUESTION - What is your opinion on the collection power vs price for league requirements compared to previous packs that have been released. For example if a new player wanted to gain enough collection power (500k+) to be able to enter Champion, they would need to buy 2619 packs ($10,713). By comparison dice/untamed was only 871 packs with a lower price costing (1820).
  • We may get harder and harder; that's what we do.

NEXT AMA will be 8 pm October 8th.

Please let me know if you see errors in my typing or information! I try my best to keep up with the discussion. Thanks so much everyone!

If you enjoyed my post and want to try Splinterlands, please use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=rosiew

Please remember my post is not meant to be financial advice and is just my opinion.
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